Well, everything really, then eat-on.
Historically, creating or capturing data has been a costly task because sensing, or reading or collating the information usually required expensive setup or large scale organisation or both. A network of weather stations for example is a logistical problem only available to huge rich organizations like governments. Trawling through written records of statistics was a lifetime task for not much usable data. Today however, things are really different. The sheer volume of data being generated and the ways to refer two or more seemingly disparate data sets to one another is becoming cheap and possible.
Phone privacy is a big issue today and people seem to have a fear of how data might be used against them. Recent revelations that the iPhone was collecting cell-tower positions was seen, rightly or wrongly, as an intrusion on a person's right to not expose their wherabouts.
I strongly believe however that the more data is available in all forms then the better life will become and the more the individual will be protected.
Telephones are being given more and more sensors. A temperature, pressure and humidity sensor on a large proportion of telephones would generate so much real-time data for weather prediction that the expensive networks of weather sensors we maintain today would simply not be needed and the sheer volume of data would open up huge possibilities for correlation of seemingly unrelated events with that information. Perhaps every mobile phone should be equipped with every type of sensor its possible to squeeze into the package. We could seed the environment with millions of cheap sensor packs by including them on the pages of magazines and even embed them in fast food packages.
More data would mean more anonymity, not less. Modern man needs to accept that his whereabouts are pretty much known all the time if he wants to participate in society. Those that don't wish to participate are often wierd anyway so society can probably do without them. Floods and floods of data would serve to make an individual's contribution far less interesting. Like the importance of one fish in a shoal of sardines.
As we generate more data, our lives will be affected by it to a greater and greater extent. It would be foolish to try to stop it because the benefits already far outweigh the inconvieniences.
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